As the lonely child of the sea, Jin’s early childhood was spent on the beaches and riverbanks; sleeping on the cool sand below the docks and befriending the gulls. He was happy on his own, walking along the endless coastline, abiding by nothing but the wind of the changing seasons.
The first time he reached out was when the loud bangs of fireworks scared him into the arms of a passing fisherman, pleading with her to get them to stop. The fisherman put her hands over his ears as another round of fireworks went off, and took him into the bustling village.
Now in the hands of strangers, Jin was constantly prodded for his identity and his family despite knowing next to nothing about himself. He tried to escape several times, only to be caught by the same fisherman and wrangled back to land.
Eventually, Jinhua was tossed back to the fisherman, a tough woman he would soon consider “mother." She shaped Jin’s natural ardour for the sea to be helpful along the pier and gave him every odd job in the book. Though he secretly longed to freely walk the coast, work cemented his presence as the boy on the dock– an honour that would fatefully bring him to meet Aino.
Surprisingly, Jinhua has a hard time on boats.
He’s lived long enough to know the ocean like the back of his hand. Although he can’t always play in the sea, he liked to think helping those on and off their pristine yachts, releasing the mooring line and watching them sail to the brink of the horizon was something to look forward to. And yet, he couldn’t help but wish that he could do the same– unbound and free.
That is, until a boy stepped off from his weekend trip to the island over the river into the palm of Jinhua’s hand. A brief moment, one that he would normally pay no mind to, ruminated in his mind when he caught sight of a simple medallion glittering in the moonlight.
He found himself pressing the pendant into the boy's hand that very evening, whispering promises to come again.
Their meetings became routine.
Under the fading light of the evening, Jinhua and Aino would be free. Their adventures knew no bounds, from walking the secret coves that Jin once hid in to riding Aino’s bike deep into the countryside. They spoke about the mundane and the extraordinary, essays and folk tales, and of each other. It was always them– Jinhua and Aino, Aino and Jinhua– walking hand in hand along the pier, off to watch the stars dapple the night sky.
For once in his life, Jinhua felt truly freed. He could only trust that Aino felt the same.
